How to Win In a High-Cost Per Click Industry

For most businesses, advertising is a necessary evil. While it’s not something every firm wants to do (or even feels like they have to do), it’s one of the only ways to get ahead…especially within competitive industries.

Paid-Per-Click (or, PPC) is an advertising model where advertisers pay publishers/search engines to direct traffic to certain sites. This is the core of digital advertising, and for some industries, the cost has only gone up.

When you think about it, there’s a lot of things most of us look up every day. From coffee shops to outfit recommendations, our Google searches can say a lot about us individually, as well as on a demographic level. And for those businesses trying to establish themselves in a competitive market, sometimes that popularity can come with a cost.

Breaking Down The High Cost

The majority of high-cost PPC services involve specialty services (I.E.: Legal, insurance, loans, etc.). If you notice from the chart linked above, many of these practices are things needed in a bind (as well as are just generally costly things). However, when you trickle down the list, the common denominator still falls under them being services. And in such a competitive marketplace, it can be hard for consumers to distinguish who’s better versus who’s better at serving customers’ needs.

One of the reasons that these industries are listed as high-cost is because most people just search or look for their immediate needs, without digging into specificity. For example, just googling “Lawyer in Charleston, SC” will most likely bring up whoever has paid to have the top results, but if I specifically need an attorney for divorce, criminal justice, or even tort, then those would be specific terms I would pay more attention to paying for.

How to Earn More (While Costing Less)

When it comes to distinguishing the types of terms you should enter in a high-cost PPC strategy, your strategy can be broken down into a few key points. First, always make your content and search terms are mobile friendly. Not only is the majority of media consumed on mobile devices, but most searches are also conducted via mobile. Creating mobile-friendly search terms is one of the first steps you should take to lower your conversion costs. Second, having a variety of tests to experiment with and analyze is critical, as what you might think your consumers want versus want they actually want could be two completely separate things. And finally, modifying and testing these terms to learn is going to imperative to your success.

While this might seem like a lot, one of the main takeaways I could give you is this — strip away the excess and focus in on what your customers really want.

How To Hone It Down

We once had a client with an immaculate career as a plastic surgeon. With over 20 years of experience, Dr. Ozan Sozer and his practice, El Paso Cosmetic Surgery, was one of the top-tier plastic surgeons in the state. However, given the high cost of PPC in the cosmetics industry, we knew we were in for a challenge in making Sozer’s practice one of the top results on the SERP.

One of the first things we looked into doing was helping them build out the right tracking mechanisms to gauge their success. After that, we were able to tackle the high cost of their bidding and find a way to produce the best ROI for their conversions.

Perhaps the most pivotal point for us was focusing on a successful keyword strategy. By using the parameters of the most profitable procedures in the most relevant search terms, we were able to break down the which ones were going to bring the highest revenue for the lowest cost. Additionally, we were able to sort out which terms were negatively impacting searches to increase traffic. Overall, the campaign was a huge success, bringing a 1316% increase in conversions, as well as decreasing conversion costs by 56%.

If you’d like to learn more about how we mastered El Paso Cosmetic’s High-Cost PPC strategy, I encourage to check out the case study below. As advertising in more expensive industries can be an intimidating process, we’re here to help walk you through gaining the highest level of success.

Author: White Shark Media

White Shark Media is a leading Digital Marketing Agency that provides PPC Management to small and medium-sized businesses.